Two foreign men were responsible for leaving at least nine pigs’ heads near the entrances of mosques in the Paris area earlier this week, and then fled the country, French officials said on Wednesday.
That act appeared aimed to “cause unrest within the nation,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement, although it did not say what country or group the men hailed from, and did not identify the suspects.
The prosecutor’s office said investigators were looking into the act both as a possible hate crime and as an act meant to “serve the interests” of a foreign power or organization.
French officials have previously suspected Russia of trying to worsen social tensions within France with both online disinformation and real-life provocations that are amplified on social media, including antisemitic vandalism, in retaliation for France’s support for Ukraine.
The pig heads were discovered on Tuesday morning and were quickly condemned by French religious leaders, politicians and top officials as anti-Muslim. Eating pork is forbidden in Islam, and Muslims generally avoid any contact with pigs, which are considered unclean.
The prosecutor’s office said that a farmer from Normandy had told investigators that two men driving a car with a Serbian license plate had bought a dozen pig heads from him.
Video surveillance footage reviewed by investigators showed that the same car had arrived in Paris earlier this week and that the two men had dropped the heads off overnight in front of mosques in Paris and its surrounding suburbs. President Emmanuel Macron’s last name had been scrawled on some of the heads in blue ink, the prosecutor’s office said.
Investigators believe the two men were using a Croatian telephone line that was detected crossing the border between France and Belgium on Tuesday morning, the prosecutor’s office said.
Laurent Nuñez, the Paris police prefect, told reporters on Tuesday that he could not “help but draw parallels” to past incidents that had been proved to involve “foreign interference,” but he did not go further.
Suspicions have focused on incidents including the stenciling of over 200 stars of David around Paris in October 2023; the painting of red hands on the French capital’s Holocaust memorial in May 2024; and the placement near the Eiffel Tower, in June 2024, of life-size coffins draped with the French flag and inscribed with “French soldiers of Ukraine.”
In those cases, investigators determined that people from Eastern Europe had been paid or directed by murky intermediaries to carry out the acts of vandalism before leaving or trying to quickly leave French territory. Four Bulgarian men are scheduled to go on trial in Paris this fall in the case of the painted red hands, prosecutors said in July.
“Although investigations are ongoing, it seems likely that these actions were carried out by Russian intelligence services,” French senators wrote in a recent report by a committee established to investigate foreign meddling operations. Russia has denied the accusations.
The accusations of foreign interference came at a time of heightened political tensions in France. Protests raged on Wednesday as a new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, took office following the previous government’s collapse. Dissatisfaction and concern about the country’s political direction and future are running high.
The pigs’ heads caused outrage and concern among France’s estimated five million Muslims, many of whom feel that hostility toward them is under-addressed by the French state. Anti-Muslim acts recorded in France in the first half of 2025 increased by 75 percent compared to the previous year, according to the Interior Ministry.
Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, said in a statement on Tuesday that the heads had “desecrated” and “defiled” the mosques, targeting not only Muslims, but also the common ideal of people living together in harmony.
“The image is unbearable,” he added. “It hurts the faithful, but it hurts — above all — our very notion of a fraternal France.”
Aurelien Breeden is a reporter for The Times in Paris, covering news from France.
Amelia Nierenberg is a Times reporter covering international news from London.
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